Cerritos, California

Cerritos spent most of its existence under a different name. Incorporated in nineteen fifty-six as Dairy Valley, the city was exactly what it sounded like: the last great concentration of dairies on the Los Angeles plain, with more than two hundred operating farms and the aroma to match. By the mid-nineteen sixties the economics had shifted.

Residential developers offered more per acre than any cow could justify. In nineteen sixty-seven the city voted to change its name to Cerritos, Spanish for little hills, signaling a fresh suburban identity. It worked almost too well.

The Cerritos Auto Square, which opened in nineteen seventy-nine, grew into one of the highest-volume automotive retail centers in the United States. The city channeled that tax revenue into a library expanded in two thousand two and became nationally celebrated as one of the most innovative public library buildings in America.